A small offhand remark by an art teacher on the back of one of my more throwaway drawings, it’s a quote that has stayed me with me nonetheless. Enough for me to put it on the front of my business card. It’s a quote from another perspective that actually helped me understand my own work process. With that in mind, I’ve found often find it difficult to write a piece in order, from start to finish. While it might logically follow to start at the beginning, perhaps with a few points in mind, I found that attempting to do that often left me with something that felt constrained and without energy.

Instead, I’ve been writing in pieces. I’d been unknowingly doing it for my fiction for a while, building on a idea by creating characters, moments, and phrases that I wanted to work in, then putting those together. This worked well because creative writing allows you a lot of room to play with structure and time. Recently, I’ve also been applying it to my critical work as well, reviews, perspectives, etc. By jotting down thoughts while playing or viewing something I can work out focal points for the piece. From there I can structure sentences that I feel represent my feelings on them.

Honestly, this method isn’t very efficient. It requires me to write my thoughts on paper in order to “feel out” the right words. I need to constantly reconsider whether phrases work with the format of the piece. It does, however, help me work out my thoughts and visually see how they fit together better. Writing paragraphs in small chunks across a page then organizing them in order and working out how to transition between them–it’s all very puzzle like.

That’s why I like it. There’s a satisfaction to writing something worth reading to begin with, but creating it from a non linear workflow adds another challenge to it. It’s not so much that I need that challenge in order to produce something worth reading, but rather seeing them in front of me and piecing it together gives me a more physical feeling of constructing the piece.

Additionally, it has the side effect of forcing me to proofread it and rethink it multiple times. It’s the same reason that I write most of my work in pen beforehand, it gives me an opportunity to read it back and see how it would flow from the reader’s perspective. Too often I become caught up in the process of pushing out words that I forget to step back and get the distance I need to properly see it. This method covers it all.

It’s not an option for a lot of writers. It generates what is probably extra work and it is very much disorganized and without form for most of it’s life. It is however, a process that I’ve found that works for me.

]]>https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/non-linear-writing/feed/0siegarettesLike BLOOD, Like Honey or The Things I’ll Do For A Pretty Facehttps://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/like-blood-like-honey-or-the-things-ill-do-for-a-pretty-face/
https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/like-blood-like-honey-or-the-things-ill-do-for-a-pretty-face/#respondSat, 24 May 2014 06:28:29 +0000http://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/?p=863Continue reading Like BLOOD, Like Honey or The Things I’ll Do For A Pretty Face→]]>Morning. Single-digit AM. I’ve been fighting monsters for the last half hour. Kill the red spikey one ONLY to impress the busty nurse floating on an oversized syringe. She’s a real-life blood drawing nurse, ya know. You should feel honoured to be in her presence.

I’m playing Killer is Dead.

“She Will” by Savages is playing in my headphones.that good time loving harlot…

I’ve failed my task enough times to break out the music. This is now a task that I will repeat until the kinetic rhythm embeds itself into my muscle memory.

She will she will she will she will… crones the vocalist in my ear. I’ll still be there in ten minutes. Still failing yet refusing to give up. The busty nurse is still unimpressed.

Killer is Dead is a game where you use your Mondo Vision, your personal enhanced version of the Male Gaze (™), to alternatively sneak looks at women’s naughty bits and stare intensely into their eyes until they are sufficiently in the mood for you to give them an expensive gift. (Which of course you earned fighting a Yakuza boss on a tiger). Repeat until she’s turned on enough to sleep with you, rewarding you with a phallus boosting alternative weapon.

I can’t muster any outrage. It’s crass, juvenile, pandering titillation from an industry that worships Sean Connery hairy chest Bond machismo as the ideal. A fuck joke from a nation with a dangerously low birth rate.

The “women” are department store toy dolls, moving along their 120 points of articulation(!) to predefined poses while performing lines upon a string pull. Still, I keep chasing them. Is it the challenge? The reward? Definitely not the plastic doll plastic private jamming sex scenes. I can’t see those enticing anyone who has so much as touched a woman. I don’t know.

I’ll do stupid things for a pretty face. I risk my neck to obtain a bonsai tree upon seeing that Moon River, KiD’s resident Audrey Hepburn homage, requests it (I should my irrational crush on all things Hepburn). I’ll kill my own brother for her kiss (the payment Mondo requests for her job). Later on, I do.

Of course that’s not before performing absurd tasks such as the aforementioned Yakuza fight, as well as fighting a motherfucking steam train. “This is man’s passion” remarks Bryan, my big Black Hawaiian shirt wearing boss as I fight to the front of the train, itself a very symbol of an old fashioned machismo becoming outdated and impotent.

I’m occasionally interrupted by calls by the women I’ve bedded. They ask when they’ll see me again and call me a cold hearted bastard when I inevitably don’t reply.

It serves as a reminder of my own selfish failures. I carry guilt like a Catholic, leaden crosses that cause wounds that never seem to stop aching. I remember the girl I left behind when torn between two hearts. In our post-graduation summer nights we promised our friendship for life. I’d never speak to her again.

I remember a one time hit and run. An encounter whose bizarre and sudden circumstance led to a group situation that was so hideously awkward I couldn’t bear to talk to her again. I’m sure she still thinks of me with disdain. The hickies from that night managed to extinguish a romance that I had been kindling so I like to think I received what I deserved, even if I still carry the guilt for it.

The night after the conclusion of Killer is Dead I felt myself compelled to words. In keeping with the theme of my hapless Susie-Boy romance, it was about a girl. “Gods help me”, I wrote, “I love her but we’re not real.” And we’re not.

Me, lost in puppy dog daydreams of her, eager to please and terrified of revealing a self that I’ve laid naked publicly, a self she would notice if she paid me attention for a real fucking moment. Her, a pin up girl fantasy I keep chasing, unaligned with the image in my head due to the burden of having to exist as a real flesh and blood woman. We come into each other’s company oblivious to each other’s actual existence because for those rare moments we are reunited we can stop thinking about our ceaseless march towards an increasingly miserable and terminal state of being. We are as fake as these Barbie doll fuck toys on my screen. So we come away a little more hollow, so what?

You can’t put a price on a little joy.

]]>https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/like-blood-like-honey-or-the-things-ill-do-for-a-pretty-face/feed/0siegarettesin selves.https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/in-selves/
https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/in-selves/#respondMon, 28 Apr 2014 06:46:35 +0000http://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/?p=861Continue reading in selves.→]]>there were
a hundred billion selves
though there exist only records of few
digital film
exposed to zeitgeist
developed in innocent passions

i buried them
first in funeral pyres
then without ceremony
when we realized
no ocean could bear
a tear for each phantom

now in breaths that come
between the two full faces of heaven
we swallow the passed
become heavy with history
tattoo time on our skin.

*Via the magic of 3DS Streetpass and Twitter I’ve managed to secure a paying job writing about videogames. Indeed. You can catch me writing copy over at GamerTell now. I’ll be doing news, previews, reviews, and the occasional feature.

*In a similar vein, I’ve started up clickbliss with a few friends. We’ll be looking to write about games, technology, music, and culture. At the moment the site is still under construction and without content, but we’ve set our Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Soundcloud up for action as well. I’ll be acting as editor-in-chief, systems manager, social media editor, as well as doing art and all the techy nonsense. So basically this should prove to be a lot of work. Material will be rolling in soon.

*I’m working on two tarot based projects in my spare time:
-One is a card game that I’m the process of fleshing out the rules to. After there is a solid foundation I hope to create some cards and playtest it.
-The other is a set of stories titled THE FORTUNE TELLER which revolve around a lot of mythological elements. While I initially intended to write it as a set of poems in the style of “From the Mouth of the Stars” the plot and backstories are starting to become detailed to the point where I’m considering writing it instead a set of stylized short stories. So far there are many moons, civilizations rising and falling, nymphs, the world tree and all manner of nonsense going on.

That’s all for now. I’ll be hoping to be updating this with more detailed progress reports and previews of my work, and perhaps some more art or comics soon.
As always you can look for me on all the nonsense social media channels, which are also annoyingly attached to the sidebar on the right there.

]]>https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/hands-on-study/feed/0siegaretteshandstudy“Portrait in Hatch.”https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/portrait-in-hatch/
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2014.
Ink and Photoshop.]]>https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/portrait-in-hatch/feed/0siegarettesportraitinhatch“EVERYTHING IS LIKE A PUZZLE TO YOU.”https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/everything-is-like-a-puzzle-to-you/
https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/everything-is-like-a-puzzle-to-you/#respondTue, 21 Jan 2014 01:33:01 +0000http://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/?p=833]]>
2014.
Ink, scissors, glue, and Photoshop.
Based on a quote by a former art teacher.]]>https://ashensiegarettes.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/everything-is-like-a-puzzle-to-you/feed/0siegarettesapuzzle